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Pothole claims increase under McGinn, but so do repairs

Potholes are a part of life in Seattle, but they’re getting more expensive for the city.

In the first year after Mayor Mike McGinn took office, claims paid for pothole damage to vehicles jumped 241 percent (to $88,000 in 2010), the Seattle Weekly reports.

In the article, the city’s Transportation Department says you can blame the wear and tear caused by last winter’s harsh weather.

We had the severe freeze of Thanksgiving weekend and then the Pineapple Express the next month and had record rainfall,” says SDOT Operations Manager Steve Pratt. “It was a confluence of the worst possible events for asphalt paving.”

Pratt also says that cuts in staffing (the department lost 22 positions last year) have impacted SDOT greatly. He then provided data that showed a significant uptick in the number of potholes reported and repaired in Seattle in 2010 as compared to previous years.

It’s not like the mayor is neglecting the pothole problem, says his spokesperson, Aaron Pickus, in response to questions from seattlepi.com.

Pickus provided recent data showing that SDOT has already repaired more than double the amount of potholes in 2011 than it did in all of 2010 (19,851 to 10,124 with four months left). The city also created a new online pothole map to track repairs. And McGinn recently announced the city would spend $3 million from the sale of a maintenance yard to help catch up on street repairs.

“The reason for an increase in claims is an increase in potholes due to harsh weather last fall/winter and deteriorating infrastructure that has historically not been addressed. This is why the Mayor proposed spending more money on street repair in his proposed budget last year, something the Council decided not to do,” he said.

The City Council is considering an $80 car tab fee to raise more money for transportation, which McGinn supports. The money would be split between street repair and improvements for transit, bikes and pedestrians.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..